Firefly
by Izzu
Summary: (Detective) Galileo. Post Galileo XX. Utsumi's odd behaviour kept nagging on him.
1. Chapter 1

_"...I want to ask your opinion on whether I should continue working as a detective, or not..."_

As much as he would try to deny that it bothered him a bit, Utsumi's words that day kept coming back to his mind.  
 _It was disturbing._

The more he tried to recall the memory, the more he recalled how pale Utsumi had looked that day. And somehow, a thought kept coming to mind. That Utsumi also had appeared tired, fatigued. Burnt out. That realisation was what sparked the small hint of worry, that kept on growing bigger and bigger afterwards.

He suddenly thought of Ishigami, and couldn't help feeling something familiar about how his old friend had seemed then... and how Utsumi had appeared that time when she came to Lab 13.

And then he recalled how Kuribayashi exclaimed how she appeared there suddenly like a _ghost_.

Was it just him? Overthinking things? Perhaps Utsumi wasn't really facing some unknown difficulties that would require his concern. That this was all a product of his own imagination. Perhaps.

But he couldn't help feeling that something was _wrong_.

 _This is illogical. And frustrating._

After making that vague statement a few days ago, she should know better to come back again to tell him that everything (whatever it was she was having problem with, back then) turned out to be fine.

That way, he wouldn't have _had_ to worry.

xxx

He looked up some of the news articles from the last few days to see if Utsumi was in any way involved in an investigation. And then he found it. One case about a supposed false arrest incident involving a man called Jounen Kenichi as well as another case related. In which Utsumi uncovered the real truth regarding the Saruwatari case. And the Jounen guy wasn't completely innocent too.

The news articles mentioned that both cases were resolved nicely. Still, it didn't explain his current dilemma.

If Utsumi managed to solve a case on her own without having to ask for his help, shouldn't she come to visit _him_ afterwards? Even if he didn't do anything to help solve the recent case, Utsumi _did_ come to him for a personal consultation. And usually, after each case she solved, Utsumi would visit him later to give him a report of the aftermath. It was unnecessary of her to do that, but by now he got used to that.

Enough that _not_ having her repeating that behaviour again be considered _uncharacteristic_ of her.

xxx

His phone rang suddenly as Kusanagi took out his phone to see that Yukawa was calling him. Puzzled, he set aside the report he was working on before answering the call.

"Must be something urgent for you to be calling me like this," he started to say as Yukawa's next few words stopped him on his track.

 **"Did something happen to Utsumi?"**

Kusanagi let out a startled yelp. "Huh? What did you mean _—_ shouldn't you be calling _her_ to ask that yourself instead of me?"

 **"Ah... sorry. I should've done that... but I was contemplating whether or not if I should and I thought—it's just a conjecture anyway..."**

"Wait!" A thought suddenly crossed his mind as he listened to Yukawa's voice. Kusanagi bit his lips. Yukawa's timing to call him at this time seemed like a good opportunity... but he needed to make sure.

"You... why did you call _me_ to ask about Utsumi?"

 **"Umm... it's nothing. Just that she haven't been visiting for a while so I thought something must've happened—well, I'll just give her a call..."**

"Utsumi took a leave for a few days," Kusanagi said immediately. "Rather than giving her a call, how about you go visit her at her place?"

A brief silence, before he could hear Yukawa let out a long sigh.

 **"Something** ** _did_** **happen to her in the last case, right?**

Kusanagi shrugged. "It's not too bad... but there was a slight issue when she tried to corner a suspect to get him to confess. She's not hurt badly... but I can see how much the case had taken a toll on her. So I told her to take a few days off."

He sighed. "She's fine now, but why don't you go visit her anyway?"

 **"What are you not telling me?"**

Yukawa's voice sounded slightly irritated, that Kusanagi couldn't help chuckling at it. "Well if you're worried about her that much, you might as well check on her with your own eyes. Bye!"

 **"Hey** ** _—_** **!"** he could hear Yukawa's voice objecting before Kusanagi turned his phone off. He let out another sigh before glancing back to his unfinished report.

Utsumi made him promise not to tattle on Yukawa on what happened to her when she tried to get Jounen to reveal his true self. But seeing her try to keep herself together on her own, hurt him a lot just watching. And then he heard a bit more from Detective Touma on the aftermath of the incident.

Knowing Utsumi and her pride as a detective, he refrained from saying anything much to try to console her. Yet, he couldn't just do nothing to help. A part of him always wondered what he could do to cheer his fellow colleague up again. Sending Yukawa to her doorstep might be the best thing he could do for her.

Kusanagi grinned to himself at his own brilliant idea before frowning. Suddenly he remembered something important before hastily calling on his old friend.

xxx

The doorbell rang, as Utsumi wondered who would come to visit her so suddenly. There was no prior notice, and she was off-duty as it was. When she opened the door, she almost let out a scream.

Smiling to her from outside the door, was Associate Professor Yukawa Manabu from Teito University.

* * *

Random venture to this old fandom... cos mun have no control of when the muse struck.


	2. Chapter 2

Of all the random surprises she had gotten so far, she never thought that Prof. Yukawa would come to her place. It was uncalled for, totally unexpected—something she never thought would ever happen. Especially coming from him. Sure, she might have mentioned to him about living in an apartment in this area, but she never mentioned a specific address. And how did he managed—?

Regardless, her body had responded quickly enough that she reacted almost immediately to try to shut the door back at the man's face. Utsumi stared at the arm that managed to slip in, preventing her to completely close the door shut.

"Now, now... isn't this very rude of you? Let me in. Or did you want to have some of your neighbours coming here to check, because of this commotion?"

Utsumi made a face to herself before easing up on the pressure on the door. Even as Yukawa walked in, she'd hastily combed out some of her hair to the front of her face before greeting him.

"Well, serves you right for coming here unannounced. To a lady's apartment to boot! I'm not even looking presentable..." she exclaimed before wrapping her arms around her body. "Why did you come here? My house is so messy, dammit!"

Yukawa gave her a once-over before shrugging. Utsumi had let her hair down freely, and she was only wearing a short sleeved t-shirt and baggy pants. Certainly not the usual look he often sees her in.

"You don't look so bad, I have to say that this is an interesting look you have... and I don't care how messy your house is. But why are you wearing your hair like that? Is there something on your face you don't want me to—?"

Utsumi snorted to herself. "Haha... as if you're interested in my appearance outside of work—eh, what're you doing?" she exclaimed as Yukawa tried to reach out towards her face. Utsumi instinctively tried to back away from Yukawa as they ended up circling around the small table at the middle of the room several times.

"Just stay still, won't you!" Yukawa hissed as he finally managed to grab Utsumi's hand. Immediately, he brushed the stray hair covering the side of her face and nearly swore out loud when he saw the bruises. "What happened to you?", he asked, frowning.

Utsumi sighed before rolling her eyes at him. She immediately sat on the small couch she had in the living room before gesturing for him to follow suit. "Ah... now I get it. Did Kusanagi make you come here? It can't be Yuge-san... and none of the other officers was the type to tell you stuff like this..." She made a face at him. "And Touma-kun didn't know about _you_."

Yukawa kept shaking his head as she spoke before glancing back at her. "Who's this Touma?"

Utsumi chuckled as she waved her hand at him. "No one important—but really, you weren't that close to any other of the MPD officers or even the local precinct. You heard this from Kusanagi, right? I'm sure you did—don't try to deny it! You can't possibly get this from anyone else," she started massaging the side of her face. " _Just when I explicitly told him not to tattle_..."

"Well, you can't really blame him for worrying..." Utsumi gave him a glare, "and I would've still come over to check if something was _really_ wrong with you—so tell me, what happened? Kusanagi mentioned that you got into a slight problem in your investigation, but that bruise on your face didn't look like it was something light."

 _Well, at least it didn't sound like Kusanagi had told him **everything** that happened..._

Utsumi's eyes started to soften as she noticed the look of genuine concern on Yukawa's face. Just like back then at Lab 13.

 _Ah... there's no way she could stand it, seeing him looking at her like that!_

Utsumi shrugged. "The bruises would fade in no time. It's nothing to really worry about." She gave a side-glance towards Yukawa to see that he's still wearing that grim-looking frown on his face. "I... miscalculated on the suspect's reaction. I knew that Jounen had a tendency to break out into aggressive behaviour but I thought I could handle it by myself. The case was officially closed anyway despite me still having some suspicions. And I can't just ask for more backup over some intuitions I have about the case... so there you go."

Utsumi turned to face Yukawa and unconsciously flinched as the man had crept closer to her without her noticing. Yukawa gently brushed his fingers over the side of Utsumi's face. "But honestly, to do this to a lady... even more to hit you in the face! Were you hurt anywhere else?"

She had to bite her lips to stop herself from laughing; because it was really not that funny. But Yukawa's face was so close, and he was really looking so worried and it's just so odd to hear this coming from him. Also for him to openly showing his concerns to her like this? Knowing how long they've worked together she expected him to know that she was much stronger than she looks, and she could take care of herself just fine. Still, it was nice to see this side of him coming out once a while.

"It's not that bad! Besides, I had my training. I wouldn't have decided to become a police officer if I couldn't take a few punches. Don't worry so much, I'm fine. Stop frowning already!"

Yukawa sighed. "That's it. We're going out. I thought it'd be enough if I just bring you some stuff from the konbi, but I changed my mind." he said as he poked at the plastic bag that he brought over.

Utsumi could see that the bag contained some onigiri and a few cans of coffee. Some of the onigiris look like starting to break apart—he probably dropped them earlier during the ruckus—but they looked edible still.

"Me? Going out? Looking like this? You can't be serious!"

Yukawa gave her the usual no-nonsense look. "You're a woman, right? Even if you don't usually put on a lot of makeup on yourself, you should at least have some basic ones. At least a talcum powder or something?"

Utsumi stared at him suspiciously. "Even if I said no, you still won't stop insisting on taking me out... right? Fine, let me change into something else first. I can't go out looking like this..."

She got up to grab some change of clothes and headed towards the bathroom. Despite that, she could've sworn she saw a wide grin on Yukawa's face.

 _What scheme was_ _he planning...?_

She shrugged. Well, she could try to figure out what that smile mean later. No rush.

xxx

"Let's go..."

"Wait!" Yukawa exclaimed before grabbing the talc on the table to dab _more_ powder on the right side of her face. "Even if you don't really care about looking pretty, you should at least put more effort to keep your appearance decent. Because honestly, even with little effort... you could still make yourself look beautiful."

She thought Yukawa would be satisfied with just the powder, but then he started picking up a tube of lipstick and blusher and started putting them on her. She stared at him suspiciously. _Why was he trying so hard?_

"I could do this myself, you know..." Utsumi started to say as Yukawa grunted and slapped her hand away. "Anyway, we're just going to take a walk in the park or something... right? So why's the fuss? How would you even know how to put on makeup, you—"

"Even if it wasn't a requirement for students to put on make-ups during lectures, I usually told mine to at least not come to the laboratory looking like a dead person." He smiled to himself before putting back the two items on the small table.

"Now you looked fine, let's go..." he said to himself before dragging her away, not letting her to even see a glimpse of her own reflection in the mirror...


	3. Chapter 3

The two of them ended up walking alongside the walkways, bordering the Meguro river on one side. It was already past blooming season, so the view of the sakura trees was not quite as great compared when it was in season. But still, it was beautiful.

Regardless of the view, she couldn't imagine there would be a day when she would walk alongside this river, with Yukawa of all people! Utsumi glanced towards the man beside her before smiling. Certainly, she couldn't imagine such things happening to her...

Yukawa, oddly enough, kept himself quiet ever since they left her apartment. Whether it was out of courtesy or anything, she found it quite amusing. From the way he had acted earlier, it did imply that he was attempting to try to cheer her up. Yet, right now... the man didn't actually start to try anything as yet.

"Are we going to just walk around in silence doing nothing?" she suddenly ask.

The man turned his attention towards her. "Well, you did look like you needed to take some fresh air... so I see no problem doing just that."

Utsumi found herself smiling, hearing those words coming from him.

"See? Few minutes out in the fresh air, and now you're smiling so easily," he added, much to her amusement. Yukawa glanced down towards her, suddenly looking so serious. "This is much better compared to how you looked, the last time I saw you."

She laughed. "What? Have you been worrying about me?"

"Yes."

Utsumi immediately turned to stare at him. "Really? For real?"

Yukawa made a face at her. "How could you think that I would not have noticed any disruption in any kind of normal behaviour in a person? In this case, we'll be talking about you. Say in the case of a working clock, or let's talk about those bigger ones on the clock towers. If it was working well, the clock should be able to display the correct timing at any point in time. But say if something happened and the clock was either running slow or faster and not at all, any observant person should be able to tell that something must have gone wrong and would have alerted someone to try to fix it. Whether if it was the gears or something jamming the—"

Utsumi started waving her arms around. "Fine, fine... I get it. Enough with the whole clock thing. So you felt that I was not being myself lately, so you're here to find out if you can do something about it?"

Yukawa shrugged. "Not exactly how I would've worded it, but somewhat along the similar line. As much as you often complained about your job with me on a weekly basis, I never paid attention to it much until recently. Because despite all of the things you've said. I could tell that you're a good officer and that you made a correct decision for choosing it as a profession. But then lately, I noticed how you've been a lot more despondent when you came to visit me so I couldn't help but notice such change. I didn't feel that I had a right to inquire if something was bothering you so I kept quiet. And then that time, you came over and asked me that question about remaining as a police officer. The tone you used back then was a lot more serious compared to before, and it didn't sound like your usual idle talk either. Usually, I didn't let something like that to bother me much but when you continued straying away from your usual behaviour I could not help but harbour some kind of concern for your wellbeing."

Utsumi blinked before remembering to close her mouth and took a closer look at Yukawa. "What? What do you mean about me 'straying away from my usual behaviour'? What _is_ my _usual behaviour_ in your opinion?"

"This recent case. You've been acting so down because of it, right? Wasn't that why you came to see me asking if you're still suitable to work in your line of job? Because you've hit a stumbling block and started doubting in your own ability as a detective. But you managed to overturn the situation—am I right?—and you managed to solve not one but _two_ cases that have a relation to each other! You did that, _on your own_... without my help directly—even if you _did_ ask for my consultation. Yet, unlike _usual_... you did not come by to tell me about the conclusion of your case. Doesn't that count as a break away from normal behaviour to you?"

Utsumi snorted. "When you say it like that, it _does_ look like a problem... doesn't it? It became a habit, me giving you a report after every one of my cases. I guess you're right. That _was_ very uncharacteristic of me."

She stopped walking and turned to lean on the railing, facing the river. "I suppose I didn't want you to see me being weak. You're not fond of handling intangible things like emotions and feelings, right? I didn't feel like I wanted to burden you with something like that. Even if I might be able to feel a lot better if you're around. It's stupid, right?"

Utsumi gave him a side glance before looking away. "I had a good cry, anyway. I guess I've been bottling up my feelings for a very long time. I _had_ that much stress. And it's not _just_ because of the Jounen case or the case I've been handling before. It's also because I started feeling like I can't exactly fit in amongst the mostly male-dominated workplace, you get me? It's hard being a female working in this field. Most of the time you see female officers being assigned to the traffic division or some other department. But homicide? Not much."

"I get what you mean. Even in the scientific community, female scientists tend to not be taken as seriously as compared to males in general. Even when their achievements were quite astounding, many were still stuck with the system of beliefs that's rooted in the old assumptions that females cannot compete with men in fields that were not commonly associated with them."

Utsumi nodded. "And not everyone in the force was like Kusanagi-san, who believed in my abilities as a police officer. When most of the people working in force only see female officers as being _only_ good at looking pretty and making teas, it's hard to stay positive all the time. Added with that suggestion of being sent for an overseas training, well... I couldn't help feeling a bit negative about it. They may say things like it's to let me learn new skills et al, but it also sounded terribly like they were just throwing me far away... because they don't find me be any use here."

"You're being sent to work overseas?" Yukawa asked suddenly as Utsumi shrugged.

"Not until the next few months, I guess. Well, if everything checks out I most likely be leaving next spring. Anyway, I changed my mind about the whole thing. Perhaps the overseas trip _would_ do me some good."

"Well, you _do_ look a lot more cheerful now..."

"Right? I expect you to think like that as well," Utsumi started to say as Yukawa almost thought her eyes started to twinkle even more than usual. "But I wonder if the people at the department would start having second thoughts later. Haha, they did seem to treat me differently since the last case. They'd probably going to have a problem dealing with complicated cases afterwards without _me_ having to handle it. Enough that they might even start _regretting_ their decision to send me away."

Yukawa chuckled. "Well, it's their loss. Though I could bet that the police would end up dragging Kusanagi back here to badger _me_ to help them or something, so you probably didn't have to worry about that. But enough of that already. Hasn't it been a while since you're able to take a leisurely walk like this?"

Utsumi turned her glance towards the trees. "I guess so. Even more, taking this leisurely walk with you, Yukawa-sensei. Shouldn't you supposed to be spending your time on your own research or something... if you have this much time on your hands?"

The man shrugged. "Well, I am allowed to give myself a time off or two. Can't overwork myself too much, it's not conducive to work in that kind of environment. That aside, taking a walk like this might even provide me with even more inspiration to continue with my research; so you can't exactly say that this trip is entirely a waste of time. It might even be beneficial for me."

Utsumi let out a giggle.

"Fireflies."

She turned around to face him, raising an eyebrow.

"Do you know how some population of certain species of fireflies has started to decrease? Scientists said that the cause was likely due the stress caused by light pollution, degradation of their habitats and loss, the destruction of their water table, and perhaps pesticides. It might also due to the overzealous collection of the fireflies by pharmaceutical companies; eager to collect large amounts of chemicals for biomedical use. They say that if no steps were taken to stop the decrease in population, the lights of the fireflies might disappear for good and it might have a major impact on the environment."

Utsumi grinned. "And, how would you suggest we could do about it?"

Yukawa shrugged. "Well, we could try to reduce the light pollution, create new habitat for them so that they could have chance to grow. Reduce more of the human intrusion towards the firefly population. The likes. That should help. Perhaps we could start researching on how to allow some of the other different firefly species to be able to adapt to a different environment as to allow them to grow. At least one species of the firefly; called the common eastern firefly, was able to do that and expand their population."

"So, that was your way of saying that you wanted to cheer me up?"

"I guess so."

"That's so sweet of you..." Utsumi started to say before noticing another figure of a man standing not far from where they were walking. She smiled as she recognised the man, and Kusanagi started waving towards them the moment he saw them approaching. She flashed a wide grin towards Yukawa. "Both of you could be so silly at times, don't you know?"

"Well, how else would you expect us to be?" Yukawa retorted back.

"Just the way you are," Utsumi replied before dragging Yukawa by hand, running towards Kusanagi.

xxx

"You know... you're right about something. I should have gone back to report to you after the last case..."

Yukawa paused in the middle of eating, before turning towards her. "Really, and why is that?"

Utsumi giggled before taking a sip of the Oolong tea. "That time, you mentioned about how the fluorescent light work... isn't it? You mentioned how the light was created by exciting the state of the atoms through an external stimulation. Well, that helped me to change the way I look at the case and lead me to the truth of the case in Nagano. And also allowed me to apprehend the real suspect. It also helped me to uncover the truth regarding Jounen. So Yukawa-sensei, even if you didn't do much... you _did_ help me a lot in the last case."

Kusanagi lifted his own glass towards her. "Good for you, but I would have appreciated it if you had asked for _more_ help before trying to crack Jounen's mask on your own. Even if you can't ask Yuge to help you, you should've called _me_ at least."

"Yes, I know. Sorry about that."

* * *

Longer explanation's in AO3. Simply put, I kinda liked Meguro river for some reason.


End file.
